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As I said we reached Karikal, had to meet a relative and from there we set out to Nagapattinam to reach Velankanni in the morning.

Velankanni is a commercial place, yet the temple didn’t sound any were near to commercial when compared to Tirupathi or other places. Devotees maintained silence and the place prevailed tranquility.

Seems like this place is the new Velankanni, there seemed to an existence of old Church in that vicinity. I heard it from an other friend who had been to both the Velankanni. I did miss to visit this Church.

This photo should give you an idea about the old shrine no 4.

Layout of the Basilica complex. 1.Basilica, 2.Nadu Thittu shrine-site of second apparition, 3. Adoration & Reconciliation chapel, 4.Our Lady’s Pond-site of first apparition, 5.Stations of the cross, 6.Stations of the Rosary, 7.Stations of the Sacraments (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I said commercial it is because I did see few more Churches in the near vicinity, heard a story about locals demanding work in the areas of maintenance around the Church, the locals have seen the improvements, they feel there is a lot of money. Well I can’t prove you by numbers, Could be rumor floating around the Church.

Photography was not allowed inside the Church, meaning they didn’t want distractions for the devotees. All of you would have watched the live event of the Church broadcasted on TV networks.

Velankanni amazed me with the kind of architecture and how the place has been maintained.

Wish the beaches had been maintained properly, for the kind revenue coming in. Proactively the locals around could have take little care.

Finally a suggestion If you ever wanted to take a trip to Thanjavur, take the Trichy highway, Yes the highway is extended till Thanjavur, you will be making more miles, certainly your car doesn’t have to suffer the bad roads, neither the driver has to undergo fatigue.

I am not sure about the ECR route, If there is any one who has taken this route, please do comment.
Well now there aren’t good roads to Nagapattinam. Guess we will have to wait.

Me and my family where going to the Thailand exhibition yesterday and it was noon, It was the first visit to Chennai trade center and had doubts on whereabouts of eat out places, so we wanted to have a light lunch as we had late break fast

.

We had a choice of going to Hotel Rathna, just then my wife said she wants to head for Hotel Saravana Bhavan just opposite the road, she was a huge fan of this Hotel, that was just about to change.

So we looked at menu and ordered for 2 sambar rice and a curd rice for my son. The guy suggested I go for a full fledged meal. I said, I want only the things which I ordered, after few minutes he returned and said that the curd rice would take time. I was thinking, all full fledged meal had curd rice as part of menu. So how come they will supply Curd rice for those customers alone. Any way I was in no mood for argument, I asked him to get me a plain dosa. Look at what I received for sambar rice, I felt like they are feeding the dogs. The plates where already worn out. We couldn’t tolerate any more. Look at the heavy pricing and the little quantity, It turns out like that they are avoiding customers who can’t make a minimum billing of 150+ per per customer. They know that they have enough customers why not charge them more, and the attitude of the staff was like if you wish, eat this piece of crab and this is how we offer things to customers.

This day we have decided no more to Hotel Saravana bhavan. I know there a zillions of Hotel Saravana Bhavan fans. Still wanted to say there are enough places which give you good vegetarian food with ambiance and be less pricey.

Well I did watch the movie Mission Impossible 1,2 & 3. I am taking this to next level, I think it is high time for Mobile phones to have this feature of Self Destruction mode. Why?

You should have heard about the excellent feature of Mobile tracker from Samsung. Wow – Awesome, That Awesome didn’t help my friend to get back his mobile.

What is Mobile tracker?
The owner of the mobile phone needs to store 2 sets of mobile number on to Samsung phone. After which in any case some one changes the SIM card of that mobile with a new SIM card, Immediately a SMS is sent to both the registered numbers of the new SIM card inserted or mobile phone number is revealed. So that the Owner can track who is currently owning his/her mobile.

Now back to story…

My friend had recently lost his mobile tracker enabled mobile phone, in spite of he calling up the current mobile owner, the phone has not yet reached his hands. He threatens to throw the mobile in to a WELL, rather he returns the mobile of fearing a plot to get captured by Cops.

So here is my simple suggestion, I am sure the mobile manufacturers are listening

This phone should have these features

1) Data Sync

2) Panic Mode

3) Self Destruction Mode.

Data Sync: Why can’t all data be backed up instantly or atleast every day, week or month, Well I suggest that to happen automatically on a computer through Wifi or any other method possible. As soon as the user authenticates a particular computer and when the user is well inside the network it should back up the new updates, with out even bothering the Mobile phone owner.

Panic Mode: As soon as you loose your mobile phone, you send an SMS to your mobile phone with some unique keys. From then on any SMS on that mobile phone received will be forwarded to the desired number set by you, All voice calls in conference mode. The data card datas are completely erased.

Assuming the thief is smart enough, inserts a new SIM card, Panic mode automatically gets activated and any future communications are to shared with the 2 desired numbers already set by the owner of the Mobile phone. More of an enhanced mobile tracker. Let us say the thief is even more smart enough to have an SIM card inserted with little money re-charged, then SMS alone gets activated and when money recharged with sufficient money it should do with conference call.

Self Destruction mode: Assuming you spoke to the thief and is not ready for any deals. Then why the heck he should have your Mobile phone or even sell them. Start activating the Self destruction mode by just sending the SMS with a unique key, kindly note that SMS can be activated from any mobile phone. The mother board starts to melt down by alerting the user with a speaker phone voice activated for self destruction.

The below mail was forward, I think it is worth a read for people who want to reduce the price of Petrol. If not many, I would like to still support this movement. Wish there was some website to educate people.

A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. When he goes to the
grocery store he pays 60 cents a dozen. Since a dozen eggs won’t last
a week he normally buys two dozen at a time. One day while buying eggs he
notices that the price has risen to 72 cents. The next time he buys
groceries, eggs are 76 cents a dozen.

When asked to explain the price of eggs the store owner says, “The price
has gone up and I have to raise my price accordingly”. This store buys 100
dozen eggs a day. He checked around for a better price and all the
distributors have raised their prices. The distributors have begun to buy
from the huge egg farms. The small egg farms have been driven out of
business. The huge egg farms sell 100,000 dozen eggs a day to distributors.
With no competition, they can set the price as they see fit. The
distributors then have to raise their prices to t he grocery stores. And on
and on and on.

As the man kept buying eggs the price kept going up. He saw the big egg
trucks delivering 100 dozen eggs each day. Nothing changed there. He
checked out the huge egg farms and found they were selling 100,000
dozen eggs to the distributors daily. Nothing had changed but the price of
eggs.

Then week before Thanksgiving the price of eggs shot up to $1.00 a
dozen. Again he asked the grocery owner why and was told, “Cakes and
baking for the holiday”. The huge egg farmers know there will be a lot of
baking going on and more eggs will be used. Hence, the price of eggs goes
up. Expect the same thing at Christmas and other times when family cooking,
baking, etc. happen.

This pattern continues until the price of eggs is 2.00 a dozen. The man
says, ” There must be something we can do about the price of eggs”.

He starts talking to all the people in his town and they decide to stop
buying eggs. This didn’t work because everyone needed eggs.

Finally, the man suggested only buying what you need. He ate 2 eggs a
day. On the way home from work he would stop at the grocery and buy two
eggs. Everyone in town started buying 2 or 3 eggs a day.

The grocery store owner began complaining that he had too many eggs in
his cooler. He told the distributor that he didn’t need any eggs. Maybe
wouldn’t need any all week.

The distributor had eggs piling up at his warehouse. He told the huge
egg farms that he didn’t have any room for eggs would not need any for at
least two weeks.

At the egg farm, the chickens just kept on laying eggs. To relieve
the pressure, the huge egg farm told the distributor that they could buy
the eggs at a lower price.

The distributor said, ” I don’t have the room for the %$&^*&% eggs
even if they were free”. T he distributor told the grocery store owner
that he would lower the price of the eggs if the store would start buying
again.

The grocery store owner said, “I don’t have room for more eggs. The
customers are only buying 2 or 3 eggs at a time. Now if you were to
drop the price of eggs back down to the original price, the customers would
start buying by the dozen again”.

The distributors sent that proposal to the huge egg farmers but the egg
farmers liked the price they were getting for their eggs but, those
chickens just kept on laying. Fin ally, the egg farmers lowered the price
of their eggs.

But only a few cents.

The customers still bought 2 or 3 eggs at a time. They said, “when the
price of eggs gets down to where it was before, we will start buying by
the dozen.”

Slowly the price of eggs started dropping. The distributors had to
slash their prices to make room for the eggs coming from the egg farmers.

The egg farmers cut their prices because the distributors wouldn’t buy
at a higher price than they were selling eggs for. Anyway, they had full
warehouses and wouldn’t need eggs for quite a while.

And those chickens kept on laying.

Eventually, the egg farmers cut their prices because they were throwing
away eggs they couldn’t sell.

The distributors started buying again because the eggs were priced to
where the stores could afford to sell them at the lower price.

And the customers starting buying by the dozen again.

Now, transpose this analogy to the gasoline industry.

What if everyone only bought $10.00 worth of gas each time they pulled
to the pump? The dealer’s tanks would stay semi full all the time. The
dealers wouldn’t have room for the gas coming from the huge tank farms.
The tank farms wouldn’t have room for the gas coming from the refining
plants. And the refining plants wouldn’t have room for the oil being off
loaded from the huge tankers coming from the oil fiends.

Just $10.00 each time you buy gas. Don’t fill it up. You may have to
stop for gas twice a week but, the price should come down.

Think about it.

As an added note…When I buy $10.00 worth of gas that leaves my tank a
little under quarter full. The way prices are jumping around, you can
buy gas for $2.65 a gallon and then the next morning it can be $2.15.
If you have your tank full of $2.65 gas you don’t have room for the $2.15
gas.

You might not understand the economics of only buying two eggs at a time
but,

you can’t buy cheaper gas if your tank is full of the high priced stuff.

Also, don’t buy anything else at the gas station; don’t give them any
more of your hard earned money than what you spend on gas, until the prices
come down…”

just think of this concept for a while.

………………please pass this concept around….reaching out to
the mass ..the world …..the universe

I don’t blame the women nor the girl child in the first place. I blame myself being part of this, and I think it is the right time to make some changes to help them out.

When was the last time you burned midnight oil to help your Mom or Wife, when they were having a normal fever?

I love my mom very much, it is that I take her granted that I don’t heed to her advice, some times don’t even suggest to take care of her health.

In my family any thing in terms of health goes wrong with men (my dad, me and my son). Women (My mom, My wife) seemed to worry a lot, and some times they don’t worry about their own health and burn midnight oil to help us out from running temperature.

About the girl child:
Looking at the number NEWS in India, that raising a girl child is often considered burden. Their main worry is Dowry system, which is slowly getting wiped out.

Girl child getting aborted

Girl child getting killed just after birth

Girl child being in worst child labor

Girl child being consider less superior in schools

Girl child molestation in schools

Girl child rape

and what not

What are women for?
Don’t blame me for saying women are sex toys, women have a primary goal in life. To give birth to a child. The trait for women is women and not men, their physical appearance when compared to men make them weaker to abide to what men commands. Just because of a command, does the women have to abide by it, think it over, usually (mother/ sisters – in laws) plead or force them to obey the orders.

So what are men for?
Men have more responsibilities, taking care of their children and women, so lies lot of sub tasks as men are usually consider stronger when compared to women generally termed “weaker sex” it is in terms of physical appearance.

About Career Oriented woman:
As India is becoming the fastest growing nations in the world and there is good increase in the women entrepreneur in every field. Well that is good welcome. The sorry state is that women get married after mid 30’s, by worrying about their career. And some don’t even marry, well looking at the above problems they faced during their growing years, they become more matured in state of mind of not getting in to relation. Some feel when in need they get… Well that is true for women and not men.

What does that mean, if women get married late?
Scientifically proven that women have good fertility below or early 30 years of age.

What will happen when girl child numbers get reduced?Inference: If we are not going to have girl child in the first place and don’t treat them with respect. They will have more options to command over men. Because as the number of women are less, and men being at large, What will be the state of men?

It is time for men to think and act wisely by striking the right balance of nature. Let women survive or shall face the inevitable truth of balance of nature.

trip meter reading/ top up fuel needed to full tank will give you = Mileage i.e KM per Litre

So what happened at Mahindra Renault Logan Drivathon – car rally
I was there for the event at 8:30 AM at the venue. The event is supposed to start at 9:00AM which didn’t happen, because of the lack of management skills. Flag off happened, after few apologies made by the announcer.

I started to take the drive at 12:09 PM, went to the Fuel station at Venkanarayana Road.

A gentleman approached and said “Sir we will fill the tank full, out of which 5 litres of fuel price will be waived off and the rest you have to pay, Is that fine with you”.

I accepted, this is how they filled the fuel

My odometer readings were noted down and written on the card. My trip meter was made zero. And I started of to the rally.

Most cars had ladies and kids in the car – the best part was that, some car drivers took a break on the road side to take a leak. “What about the ladies and the kids?” What a shame?, Even if they had arranged for some nice place to take a short break for 2 hour long drive, it would have been nice. Well, my family did take a break at the Petrol Pump station at Venkatnarayana road, before the rally started. I realized, so was happy for my family too.

So my trip meter reading said 103 KMS when I was back from Mahabalipuram to Venkatanaraya road Bharat petrol pump station. I was doing between 50 and 60 KMS/hour. I was driving like a monkey as ordered, to execute things as said.

Now the top up started at the pumping station which recorded about 4.155 litres of petrol. So that means 103/4.155 should be my mileage. Which is actually wrong, because the Car fuel indicator says that my petrol tank is still not full. (Check the video)

My mileage is 24.789 KM per litre, WOW, I could believe it. The same car was doing last week, having a mileage of 9 KM per litre

Here is one more catch my fuel indicator was not saying that it is full tank, see the video to believe it. See other photos to know what was my readings.
Click on the image for a larger view

Did you notice the time, which I referred while I entered the pump station 12:09 PM and at what time did I start 12:35 PM and at what time I reached the pump station again 2:59 PM
You want to why the delay

Click on the image for a larger view
Do you see the Mahindra Renault Logan on the opposite side of the road in a queue.

What is explained in the video?
If you noticed the video, I had taken at the time when I reached the YMCA ground, still wondering WHY the fuel indicator is not showing the fuel tank full. So it means that there is enough space to fill up some more fuel to make it full tank. Which most of them didn’t realize.

Now to answer the questions

Do you want to know who where the animals?
there were 100 and odd drivers with their family, driving their cars, following orders and not not having fun on the gracious day Christmas

and Who tested on us?Mahindra Renault Logan Marketing team

A surprise did happen during the prize distribution ceremony. A owner of Mahindra Renault Logan was agitated and trying to claim for the prize as his car did a 40KM per litre mileage (Diesel version owner)

and Who benefited out of this Mahindra Renault Logan Drivathon?Can you imagine 100 and odd drivers spending their money to filling up the fuel tank full and driving their own cars and following orders at the mercy of Mahindra Renault Logan team for only one reason to prove that Mahindra Renault can do 33KMs per litre for the petrol version and 37KMs per litre on the Diesel version.
I should say that the marketing guys made little spend by gaining more

breakfast (bread sandwich and water, if you like it eat it else leave it. That was stance. Hospitality ZERO)

5 litres of fuel waived off during full tank session

lunch (Saravana bhavan – Mini meals)

and another 4-5 litres of fuel for top up total of 8-9 litres of fuel while including the 5 litre of fuel which was waived off during the full tank session (Petrol or Diesel)

Spend on venue

And of course the event management team.

Who are the loser?

Fuel to fill up the tank

quality family time on the Christmas day

apart from that those god damn sponsor stickers from JK tyre and those numbers sticked all over the car. Who is gonna pay to remove that, With out spending money.

Mahindra Renault Logan owners are the ultimate losers to gain new customers

Who were the gainers?
Mahindra Renault Logan Marketing team – to make fake mileage result. It is pretty simple I say, you have around 100 odd drivers at your disposal feed them you have the results.

Do you want to know how this Viral Marketing is supposed to work?
Let’s say 100 and odd Mahindra Renault Logan happy customers, who had good mileage experience is about to unfold the secret to all their friends and relatives, well sort of boasting off that their car did give an ultimate mileage.

If you care for fellow car owners please digg this or post a link on your blogs. Atleast the new car owners can be spared.

How many of you can remember your close or dearest friend’s Phone number?
If you did, Can you remember one more of your close pal’s Phone number.

The best part is most of us are used to high tech gadgets like the cell Phones or the PDA or the iphone (very usable one)

Just to point out when you had your land line Phones (when no mobile Phones were around), how many of you were able to remember your friends Phone number.

I remember my school days where I had everyones phone number on my finger tips. Why did we remember them, because the land line phones which existed long ago didn’t have memory to store all of the contact list.

We forgot to exercise our brains, when we got used to the high tech gadgets.

Now here is the simple tip to exercise your brains, or an easy way to increase your memory power. Just follow few steps

Jot down all the contact information from your mobile phones to phone book or your diary.

Erase all your contact list information from your mobile phones

Every time you make a call, read the numbers loud and dial them on your mobile or your land line phones

Believe me you are about to remember your phone numbers with out even looking in to your Phone book or diary

Next tip: follow these simple tips

We all have multiple bank accounts, so why not benefit out of that.

Write the bank name and the account number, in case you have internet access write down the username and the passwords and the contact number of the phone by bank . Write it couple of times, or during lunch breaks or even after having sex

repeat the same for 5 day

follow the same for your other bank accounts

follow the same for your credit cards and their Ipin, hpin and tpin numbers and the phone number mentioned on the credit card

The next time you talk to your bank. You already remember the phone number and the account details at your finger tips, you will save lot of time messing around to pick the papers and credit or debit cards to find out the information, when the representative is requesting you over the phone. Believe me, with in few seconds of the conversation she knows you are the one who belong to the account and your request are done right away, because you are confident in answering them and prompt, no searching…

Well in case of missing or theft, you know what number to call and how to block your credit and debit cards in a jiffy.

BTW, If you loose your mobile phone, you don’t have to worry, atleast about your contact list information.

One more hot tip: When you look at your friends car or motor bike, just note down his vehicle number and try to read it loud in your inner mind, couple of times. The next time you see your friends vehicle in a parking lot. You know for sure, your friend is around. Call him, who knows you may have get together and a loud party.

Summary: So what are the ways we learned to remember or increase our memory power

Probably I was one of the lucky guys who had a test drive of a fully loaded Mahindra Logan 1.6 petrol version.

It was afternoon and was quiet hot in chennai when I took a test drive. It was an hour test drive which I took, I had a complete feel of this Logan 1.6 litre, I took the car from the showroom to my residence (20KMs away) to show the new car to my wife. It started to rain on the way, had the feel of the wipers. Indeed they are good, nothing great about that, infact most cars give you the same feel.

But the visibility of the road was good even when the rain started to pour down heavily.

Reached home, showed my wife the new car. The thing which I actually fell for was the boot space an awesome 510 Liters. My first car was Maruti 800 and traveled 3 times to Thrissur, Kerala and had a terrible experience with the baggages which were actually placed inside the car rather than the boot. My wife was also stunned. WOW

Took a quick spin with my wife in the Logan 1.6, well I should say that the test drive vehicles are always the top end ones provided, they are tuned to dance to all your tunes. They screech, give you an awesome feel of that mean machine.

My son just enjoyed as much as any kid would, as he moved and rolled all over the floor and the seat. Well too spacious. His comment was “The next time we go to native place, I can sleep well at the back or I could play with all my toys while listening to my favorite songs”

So now back to showroom, It started to become dark and I switched on the light, the driver, who sat next to me said “You could adjust lights according to your wish” and showed me the controls. He offered me to show on how to adjust the seat height, currently available in the top end models. (check it up before you buy) Well it started to rain again, I wasn’t feeling that uncomfortable even while it was dark and raining. There was decent visibility of the road even on the either corners of the glass. While the Maruti SX4 had small opening or vent kind thing to offer more visibility ( that actually sucks)

I had another option from a different vendor to test drive the Mahindra Logan 1.4 GLX and that is this one on the picture
If you thought that the Mahindra Logan 1.4 GLX, had power like the SX4 or a Ford Fiesta or Fiat palio or even a Maruti 800 which I owned earlier. You are quiet wrong, the car was not that responsive as its fully loaded Logan 1.6 liter engine, It neither screeched nor gave me a jolt. This car was meant to give the mileage which they are promising (15.5 KMPL on city traffic) Yeah quiet possible if didn’t had that power. I felt the same when I took my friend’s Honda City ZX. The moment ZX touched 40KMPH it kicked some ass. But the Mahindra Logan 1.4 GLX was not that great to feel. Brakes were responsive.

Just happened to stumble upon justine’s blog, an ardent apple fan . Her video remarked to be either sarcastic or she really felt for Steve Jobs.

The whole world knows when you buy new Gadgets or Status icon products, they are meant to be bit pricey and as time passes by, old models have to give way for the new model products and the prices have to be slashed in order to keep the old one in the market to meet the manufacturing cost of the production.

I bought my Nokia N70 in India, when the product was just launched it was 25000 INR (USD 500 approx.) and 6 months down the lane it was 15000 INR (USD 300 approx.). Does it mean, we all send mails to Nokia.

What a crap, There are still Iphone users who believe that they have premium product or atleast an usable product.

Well I love Apple for the WOW/usability products, being an ardent fan of the PC for years, I do have second hand Ipod mini Apple did replace the batteries free of cost after 1 yr and would love to possess the Iphone when it hits the Indian market.

Steve I am not complaining, just get us the Iphone to India, even if you hike and reduce the price, there will Indians Apple fan who love your products.

One thing I would like to say “Steve you have crazy Apple fan, who makes crappy videos out of your name”

Justine: No hard feeling, If you felt the post is in appropriate, let me know. ( I am away for this weekend, no computers, no cellphones. Will respond soon.)